She would run into him heading to the river to fish as she
was on her way to weed her green bean patch. In the evening, Innocent would
give Jeanne's husband Nicholas a few extra fish that he'd caught that day, and
then they'd share a few glasses of urwagwa, the local beer made from
banana juice and roasted sorghum. Jeanne was always grateful for Innocent. She
had 11 children, and the fish helped fill the dinner table.

Jeanne Sinunuayabo sits with her sons, Jean Claude, 17, left, and Nicholas, 21, right. Jeanne's two oldest sons were killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide by her friend and neighbor. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS

Then in 1990, ethnic tensions that had been smoldering for
years ignited. This coincided with the Rwandan Patriotic Front—made up of
Tutsis, just like Jeanne and Nicholas—invading the country for three years,
clashing with Hutu government forces as well as French and Zairian troops sent
in as reinforcements.

Jeanne saw Hutus entering and leaving buildings, never sure
what they were talking about. The more they met, the more she worried. Nicholas
was sure the stares and whispers against Tutsis were some kind of a bad joke.

Threats and Harassment

Then the threats started. Jeanne says she remembers the
neighbors saying: "The time will come when we will kill all of you. From
children to unborn babies, to the elderly, we don't want any of you left
behind. You will all perish."

Jeanne had to pull her kids out of school because their
classmates beat them up as they walked to school in the morning. "You
Tutsis are useless!" the children would yell at them. Her children would
come home and ask, "Why do people say that to us, Mom?" Jeanne would
look at them and not know how to respond. "Because we're Tutsis," she'd
tell them. The truth was, Jeanne sometimes asked herself the same question.

So they waited. Their Hutu neighbors didn't talk to them
anymore, including Innocent, a Hutu. He was never much for politics, but was
swept up in the fury. The tension in villages and towns around Rwanda
smoldered. And then, on June 6, 1994, the plane carrying Rwandan president
Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down. Habyarimana was a Hutu. Rwanda exploded; the
killing started almost immediately.

"The most difficult part," says Jeanne, "was
that you couldn't hide anywhere. These were people that knew our moves, we had
nowhere to run."

The neighbors started by toying with them, a dark kind of
harassment.

"Everyone outside," a neighbor barked at Jeanne,
Nicholas and the kids. "Make a straight line."

"Why are you doing this?" Jeanne cried out. "We're
friends."

"We can't be friends with the Tutsis, with snakes like
you," they responded.

"Start praying," they said, "because you're
all going to die."

Snakes are all the same, Jeanne remembers them saying,
referring to Tutsis. If you kill a big snake (an adult) and you leave the small
one (a child), it will grow up and bite you.

But that night, they hadn't come to kill, just to terrify.
They walked off into the night, leaving Jeanne and the kids trembling and
confused.

"I wondered," she says, "how people could
change in such a short time. How could someone turn against you who has been
your friend—who you've lived with in the same neighborhood without any problem,
your kids visiting each other—and all of a sudden they start calling you names
and killing you."

Hatred Breeds Murder

By this time, Kigali was hemorrhaging with violence.
Often drunk on banana beer, Hutus manned roadblocks and sharpened their
machetes on the asphalt roads. They listened to Radio Mille Collines as their
broadcasts poured gasoline on the fire of hatred. "In truth, all Tutsis
will perish," the announcers said. "They are disappearing little by
little thanks to the weapons hitting them.…They are being killed like rats."

Jeanne, left, with Dorcella. Dorcella's husband, Innocent, killed two of Jeanne's children during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Jeanne has forgiven Dorcella and Innocent. She even visits Innocent in prison. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS

Nicholas wondered if their neighbors really had it in them
to kill their good friends. Could Innocent, his drinking buddy, really take a
machete to him? Jeanne knew he could. So she gathered up the kids, all except
her two grown boys who thought they'd be fine at home, and fled to the woods.

Not long after, Innocent showed up at the family house with
a cutlass. Jeanne doesn't know exactly what happened; friends later recounted
what they saw. She says her two oldest boys—who were funny and warm and bought
pens and notebooks for their younger siblings, who had known Innocent most of
their lives—hid, but he found them. He killed them. Then walked home and told
Dorcella what he'd done.

"He was different, kind of scared," says Dorcella.
"Like someone who has done something for the first time. He wondered what would
happen later. And he was haunted by the fact he had killed friends that he knew."

The next night, Nicholas, perhaps thinking he'd lose his job
as a security guard if he didn't show up, went to work. Perhaps he didn't
realize roadblocks had been set up or just how deep the hatred was against
Tutsis. Nicholas never made it home from work. Someone told Jeanne they saw his
body in the street; they described how he'd been killed by machetes.

The Interahamwe—the Hutu militia—eventually found Jeanne and
the kids in the forest. They marched them and other Tutsis away to be killed.
But they ran into a contingent of Rwandan Patriotic Front soldiers. The Hutus
fled. Jeanne and the kids were saved.

Aftermath of Genocide

After the genocide, Innocent and Dorcella escaped to Democratic
Republic of the Congo. But Jeanne was trapped by the images of her family.

She couldn't turn off the film that was playing in her mind:
of her boys, of her husband. It played in a loop, their lives, their deaths.
She had to get it out of her system. She unleashed her story on everyone she
met; she shouted at them, about how her men had been killed.

"The thing that hurt me the most," Jeanne says, "Was
that I didn't get a chance to bury my kids."

"All that time I felt that pain in my heart and that
hatred," she says. "And there were so many times I asked myself: Why
did this happen to me? Why did these people do this?"

Jeanne knew that, in a way, Dorcella had lost her husband, too.
He wasn't the man she'd lived with for all those years; he had turned into
someone else.

Quest for Forgiveness

Two years later, Innocent and Dorcella returned to Rwanda,
prepared to live with the consequences. Jeanne passed Innocent on the village
footpath one day. "People say you killed my children," Jeanne told
him.

"Yes, that's true," he said. "I killed your
family."

Then he asked for forgiveness.

Jeanne wasn't ready, but the urge was building.

Within two weeks, he was arrested by the state. He served
four years in jail. During this time, he converted to Islam. And he battled his
own demons. Every time Dorcella visited him, he sent her away with two
messages: Tell Jeanne I'm sorry. Ask her to forgive me.

After the 1994 genocide, CRS wanted to help the many Rwandans who were suffering
from emotional wounds. Many people were trying to come to grips with what had happened
to them. In 1996, CRS Rwanda, through the episcopal and diocesan commissions on
justice and peace, started working with the Church to provide communities with
trauma healing, conflict management and reconciliation.

CRS finances and
organizes training for priests on how to talk to Rwandans about reconciliation.
In parishes, CRS supports youth groups to spread messages about forgiveness and
unity through music, dance and drama. In addition, volunteers visit survivors
to discuss the importance of forgiveness and meet with people imprisoned for genocide
to talk about seeking forgiveness.

The project operates in five of Rwanda's nine dioceses: Butare, Cyangugu, Kabgayi,
Kibungo and Kigali.

During this time, Jeanne started hearing the priest at her
Catholic church talk about forgiveness and reconciliation. Since 1996, Catholic
Relief Services and Caritas have been teaching priests in five Rwandan dioceses
how to talk about reconciliation with their parishioners (see sidebar).
They also work with volunteers who visit Rwandans who have gone through trauma and
discuss the importance of forgiveness and conflict resolution.

If I forgive him, Jeanne thought, maybe I can finally live
in peace.

While Innocent was serving his sentence, Jeanne knew it was
time.

She sat her kids down and told them that she was going to
forgive Innocent.

"I have forgiven him," Jeanne told her kids. "What
about you?"

The kids forgave him too. But it's different for them. They
don't remember the genocide. And, unlike their mother, they haven't gone to
visit Innocent in prison. They haven't spent time with him, chatting about
life.

Rebuilding Friendship

Four years later, Innocent was a free man. He wanted to show
Jeanne that he was genuinely sorry. Innocent brought banana beer to Jeanne's
house—a way of asking forgiveness in Rwanda. This time, Jeanne said yes.

In 2005, Innocent appeared before a gacaca (GA-cha-cha)
court, a Rwandan trial by peers based on community justice. During the hearing,
Innocent described the panga, the traditional machete, and how he hit Jeanne's
sons.

The detail was graphic, but Jeanne never wavered. Her
forgiveness of Innocent remained. It was so deep, in fact, she told the
authorities that she forgave Innocent, thinking her forgiveness would release
him from prison.

The authorities weren't swayed. The gacaca court sentenced
him to 27 years in prison.

It's been a month since Jeanne's seen Innocent. He's
converted back to Catholicism and even had an official wedding ceremony with
Dorcella. Jeanne attended.

Jeanne goes to the prison when she can, whenever she has
money. She likes to take him bread and sugar to sweeten the bland porridge in
prison.

She says she's forgiven him unconditionally. That it's set
her free. The days of her thoughts being consumed by Nicholas and the boys are
fewer now.

They don't even talk about the past now. The conversation is
comfortable, like two old friends.

They talk about common friends in the village.

She asks how he's doing.

And he asks about her kids.

Lane Hartill is the western
and central Africa regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services.
He is based in Dakar, Senegal.